{"id":1766791,"url":"https://alion.io/job/lesaka-technologies-senior-backend-engineer-switching-systems","title":"Senior Backend Engineer (Switching Systems)","company":{"id":57416,"name":"Lesaka Technologies","domain":"lesaka.tech","url":"https://alion.io/company/lesaka-technologies","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Simplify","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":80,"open_postings":12,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":13,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["Cape Town, South Africa"],"countries":["ZA"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":40000,"max_usd":78000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":27},"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"gRPC","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"TCP/IP","optional":false},{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-05-04T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-03","last_verified_at":"2026-10-18T16:14:27Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":167,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":167},"description":"Job Title: Senior Backend Engineer (Switching Systems)\nLocation: Cape Town, South Africa (Hybrid or On-site)\nRole Overview\nWe are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to design and build high-performance switching systems that route, process, and manage real-time transactions or communications at scale.\nThis role is deeply technical and backend-focused, requiring strong experience in low-latency systems, concurrency, and reliability engineering. You will play a key role in building the core systems that power critical flows in our platform.\nKey Responsibilities\nCore Systems & Switching Logic\nDesign and implement switching/routing engines for high-throughput, low-latency systems\nBuild systems that handle real-time decisioning, routing, and failover\nDevelop and maintain protocol-level integrations (e.g., TCP/IP, HTTP, gRPC, or domain-specific protocols)\nEnsure correctness, ordering, and idempotency in transaction flows\nPerformance & Reliability\nOptimize systems for latency, throughput, and fault tolerance\nDesign for high availability and graceful degradation\nImplement robust retry, backoff, and circuit-breaking mechanisms\nDebug complex production issues in distributed systems\nBackend Engineering\nBuild and maintain backend services and APIs\nWork with data stores (relational and/or NoSQL) to support high-scale workloads\nContribute to system design, code reviews, and engineering standards\nInfrastructure & Observability\nCollaborate on deployment architecture (cloud or hybrid environments)\nImplement monitoring, logging, and tracing for critical paths\nImprove system visibility and operational readiness\nExperience\n5-8+ years of backend software engineering experience\nProven experience building high-throughput, low-latency systems\nExperience working on switching, routing, or real-time processing systems (telecom, payments, networking, or similar domains)\nKey Competencies \n1. Technical Skills\nStrong proficiency in one or more backend languages (e.g., Go, Java, C++, Rust, or similar\nDeep understanding of concurrency, multithreading, and asynchronous systems\nExperience with network protocols and system-level behavior\nSolid understanding of distributed systems fundamentals\nExperience with databases under high load\n2. Systems Thinking\nAbility to reason about failure modes, edge cases, and system limits\nStrong debugging and performance tuning skills\nFocus on building resilient, production-grade systems\nNice to Have\nExperience with telecom switching (e.g., SS7, SIP) or payment switching (e.g., ISO 8583)\nExperience with event-driven architectures or streaming systems (e.g., Kafka)\nFamiliarity with kernel-level or systems programming concepts\nExperience in regulated or mission-critical environments","description_format":"text","description_chars":2729,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"South Africa","iso":"ZA","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Cards & Card Issuing","Payment Processing & Gateways"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-03T14:14:16Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":6,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.209,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":166,"expected_fill_days":13,"reasons":["conf:1","stale_co","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/lesaka-technologies-senior-backend-engineer-switching-systems","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/lesaka-technologies-senior-backend-engineer-switching-systems.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-18T17:44:15Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":22745,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-19T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":57416},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=57416"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Flesaka-technologies-senior-backend-engineer-switching-systems"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Flesaka-technologies-senior-backend-engineer-switching-systems"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Flesaka-technologies-senior-backend-engineer-switching-systems"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/lesaka-technologies-senior-backend-engineer-switching-systems\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Flesaka-technologies-senior-backend-engineer-switching-systems"}]}